Conduction

Conduction

Father Babin

Download

In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new novel The Water Dancer, Hiram Walker is an enslaved man living in southern Virginia. Hiram learns instinctively from an early age that things are not as they should be in the antebellum South. He is perceptive enough to see right through the disturbing paradoxes and hypocrisy of a society ruled by slavery, where cotton is king and freedom is elusive and arbitrary.

Hiram is both the son and slave of his owner. He’s the walking paradox of slavery. Hiram is one of the Tasked; his father is one of the Quality. Hiram also happens to have a prodigious memory, and because of that gift, he is secretly recruited to serve in the Underground Railroad.

But Hiram has another gift, and here, the novel veers into the world of fantasy. Hiram is able to summon up special powers of conduction. The word “conduction” was used to describe the surreptitious ferrying of slaves from the South to the North via the Underground Railroad. But in Coates’s novel, conduction takes on an otherworldly dimension. It’s a magical journey in which slaves are transported to freedom over vast distances in the blink of an eye.

And conduction can only be mastered by a special person with the gift of stirring up powerful memories, memories weighed down by the evils of slavery and haunted by its accompanying cruelties. But conduction also draws on memories of what it’s like to be free. In order to magically usher slaves to freedom, the conductor feeds on these memories as food for the journey. And the memories are both personal and deeply tied to a larger community of enslaved individuals.

Memory is the impetus behind conduction.

When Hiram himself experiences the power of conduction, he wades into a river while simultaneously relating the stories of oppressive life under the grip of slavery. Giving voice to the memories of captivity is what fuels the journey towards liberation. And with hints of the Exodus story, the persons being conducted miraculously float or dance on the water into a land of freedom.

In his liberation from out of the “coffin of slavery” into freedom in the North, Hiram encounters Harriet Tubman, known as “Moses.” She, too, possesses the power of conduction. It just so happens that when Hiram is conducted to Philadelphia, he finds himself at a station on the Underground Railroad located at 9th and Bainbridge Streets, just a block from the Church of the Crucifixion, where our RISE ministry gathers.

It is Harriet Tubman who highlights for Hiram the importance of memory in the journey towards freedom. She tells him that “[t]o forget is to truly slave. To forget is to die.” She continues, “memory is the chariot, and memory is the way and memory is bridge from the curse of slavery to the boon of freedom.”[1] Hiram’s own conduction to the North is his initial taste of true liberty. And so, Hiram’s ensuing adventures in the Underground are powered by his own memory of the horrors of slavery, as well as the joys of freedom. Once he has experienced a taste of that freedom, he cannot be the same ever again.

Memory is the bridge between captivity and release.

It seems hard not to think of baptism and parted bodies of water and figures like Moses on this feast of Christ the King. For today we rejoice in our citizenship in a kingdom whose ruler is Love itself and whose very life liberated creation from its bondage to maleficent forces. To celebrate Christ as King is itself paradoxical, for we do not attribute our freedom from Sin and Death to the victory of a heavy-handed autocratic. No, to celebrate Christ as King is to rejoice in the fact that there is a power greater than all the powers of darkness, as threatening as they may seem. And that wondrous power of God, infinite though it may be, does not claim its authority through manipulation or rigid control. In Christ, we have been conducted into a kingdom where we are truly free.

But unlike the conduction of a fantasy novel, our transference from a kingdom of Sin and Death into a kingdom governed by forgiveness and redemption is not magic. It might appear to be magic in a world that has little time for mystery and no concept of invisible powers. But far from being magic, our conduction into freedom is nothing other than the working of God’s almighty power.

 Our conduction by Christ happened in a real time and place, and in that conduction, real blood was shed. It had a cost. The Red Sea waters parted there on that holy hill of Calvary, where all created things danced across the water and were reconciled back to God. The ultimate sacrifice was paid. And so we can sing, “the strife is o’er; the battle done.”

And we must never forget where our true freedom came from, for as Harriet Tubman cautioned Hiram Walker, “to forget is to die.”

But if the battle has been won, what are we to say of the ubiquitous presence of sin and evil? If sin continues to rear its ugly head, what are we to say of the efficacy of being washed in the waters of baptism, where we are cleansed from sin and where we have risen to new life? What has that baptism achieved when we find ourselves still ensnared in doing the things we know we shouldn’t do and precisely the things we do not want to do? If we truly inhabit a kingdom marked by freedom from the powers of darkness, then why has the world seemed to go off the rails? If we have been reconciled to Christ and one another and have been brought together under his most gracious rule, then why are we literally and figuratively at war with one another?

And is it too much to ask, even nearly two hundred years later, whether King Cotton himself has lost his power? In a country that is supposedly founded on principles of “liberty and justice for all,” is it not a paradox that so many people are still struggling to rise from the coffin of bondage, wherever it may be and whatever it may look like?

Or perhaps we simply have a collective amnesia, even a deliberate amnesia. And if the fictitious words of Harriet Tubman from a novel are correct, are we still in captivity because we have forgotten? Is it fair to say that we have lost our hold on memory? Have we failed to remember how dangerous those waters of baptism are? On the other side of the river over which we have danced, things seem so safe, and the memory of the inherent risk of salvation seems like the wisp of a dream. The muddy waters of the Jordan are no longer imperiled by swirling eddies and rip tides, and the waters of baptism seem no more dangerous than a baby pool.

But if memory is the chariot from out of the coffin of slavery, where cotton is king, into the land of freedom where Christ is King, then maybe we need to summon anew the memory of our own conduction from darkness to light. For Hiram Walker, in The Water Dancer, the taste of freedom in the North juxtaposed with the evil of being Tasked was the key to unlock the door to freedom for others who were enslaved.

And memory is the chariot from one kingdom to another.

Surely, our memory cannot be so faint that we are unable to recall what true freedom looks, sounds, smells, and feels like.

For memory is the chariot, and to forget is to die.

We who have journeyed through the waters of baptism have risen to new life, and we are marked as Christ’s own forever. We must live; we are, in fact, alive in Christ.

So, can you taste and savor those memories of what true freedom looks like?

Imagine that moment when you vividly recalled your sins and asked God for forgiveness, rather than glossing over the error of your own ways. Maybe it was in sacramental confession. Or maybe it was on your knees in prayer at the foot of your bed, behind a closed door, where you pleaded for God’s mercy to wash away your sins. Can you remember the sheer joy of freedom when you knew with all your heart that God had already forgiven you and the slate had been wiped clean? That’s conduction.

Can you think back—and it’s so hard these days—to a time when diverse groups of people could actually speak to one another rather than scream in hate? If you stretch far enough back into the recesses of your memory, you might taste that sweet elixir of unity and harmony. That’s conduction to the other side of the river where we have some hints of freedom from division and disunity.

And can you summon a sensation of those days when every step out into the public sphere wasn’t fraught with worries about physical safety in an increasingly violent society?

Or what about those days, if it was ever so, when we were not quite as chained to capitalistic greed and technology in the ways in which we currently are?

Can you even recall those times in your life when you were not held fast in the grip of fear and anxiety—whether about work, school, or your reputation?

Those were the days of conduction, where we could sense at least one foot firmly planted in the kingdom of freedom. We could feel ourselves liberated by One so much larger than ourselves and conducted into something so much greater than our own narrow mindset.

Here’s the real paradox: our King, Christ, does not rule as an autocrat. While he has already conducted us into his kingdom of light through the waters of baptism, he does not tie us down there. The journey of life and the journey of baptism, harrowing as they are, find us at various times with one foot on the other side of the Jordan, and one on the shore of the land we have left. And if in Christ all things hold together, and in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, then the good and the bad memories must all be placed under the dominion of Christ. For Christ will free it all.

Yes, as the Letter to the Colossians tells us, we have been rescued by Jesus Christ. But if we let our memories lapse while dancing on the water to freedom, the tide may pull us over to the land of captivity more often than we would like. Our task, where memory is the chariot, is to relive, over and over, our memories of freedom, in which Christ won for us the victory. Each day of our lives is a gift, a chance to savor the milk and honey of the land of promise, so that we never lose our hope.

Hiram Walker ultimately realizes that to remember is to acknowledge that his own freedom is not to be won by himself. He has to shed the illusions ingrained in a society where cotton is king. This is a society that deludes him into thinking that he can trust his slave-owning father to free him. It deludes him into thinking that he can count on his own wit to escape to freedom. It deludes him into thinking that he himself can serve as the savior of his fellow enslaved brothers and sisters. But really, he can only experience liberation by remembering his struggle for freedom as part of a wider community of oppressed people grasping for their own deliverance. And this deliverance happens through a power beyond himself.

For us, in a world that is very real and not fictitious, the power beyond ourselves that has freed us and continues to liberate us from the chains of death is not magic. It is God. It is God alone who has redeemed us and has saved us from the powers of darkness. It is God alone who continues, each and every day, to pull us back out of bondage and draw us deeper into the Promised Land of light.

And if memory is the chariot, then this is the thing we should never forget. We have been saved, and yet we still need to be saved, each and every day of our lives. May we never lose our memory of that delectable taste of the kingdom of freedom. For in that memory is our hope.

[1] Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer (New York: One World, 2019), p. 335, Kindle version.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin
24 November 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

A Love Letter Home

A Love Letter Home

Father Mullen

Download

The August 8th edition of Life Magazine in 1955 included a short spread on a new theory about the paintings of the Greek-born Spanish painter, El Greco.  The theory was that the artist had “used insane people for models” when he painted images of the apostles and other figures from the Scriptures.  “To back up his theory,” according to the magazine, the scholar who proposed it “went to the asylum in El Greco’s town of Toledo where he was able to match some of El Greco’s ‘possessed’ portraits with remarkable look-alikes.”*  The magazine includes photos of the faces of patients at the asylum that are paired with close-ups of El Greco paintings, notably a comparison of St. Paul.  The caption points out that the “haunting eyes and sensitive features of  El Greco’s St. Paul are matched by [a] mental patient whose beard and hairline also resemble [the] portrait.”

Although there is apparently some evidence that El Greco visited the asylum in question, the theory that his models came from there has not held up well in the art world, despite the notable  similarities of beards and hairlines of latter-day mental patients.

Still, it suits us, by and large, to think of St. Paul as crazy.  Often, he was one to go big or go home.  

Take his views on relationships.  If you’re a man, he’s going to tell you that you are large and in charge, you are the head of the household, and women should be subject to you.  If you are a woman, he is going to tell you to keep your head covered, your mouth shut, and to be subject to your husband.  If you are married, he’s going to tell you that’s ok, but if you are single, he’s going to tell you to stay single - unless you can’t control your passions, then maybe you should get married.

On other topics, too, he had a knack for drama.  If he thinks you are out of line, causing trouble in they church, he’s going to thank God that he had nothing to do with baptizing you.

When it comes to conflict resolution, he’s going to tell you that Christ is our peace, and that he has made two groups into one, and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.

When he writes about love, he waxes eloquent, and tells us not only that love is patient and kind, but that it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and that love never ends!

About Jesus, St. Paul doesn’t just say that the Lord came down from heaven.  No, he tells us that “though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.”  And that God “highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.” (Phil 2:6-11)

And it would never suffice for St. Paul to tell you simply that Jesus loves you.  For him, the truth is so much larger: “neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God n Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39)

Maybe this is the way crazy people talk... well... crazy people… and preachers.  It certainly bears little resemblance to most public discourse these days.

When St. Paul arrived in Thessalonica, he found a synagogue and he got to work.  He taught at the synagogue on only three sabbaths, but in that short time, he planted a seed that would grow a church.  Say what you will about St. Paul, he wasn’t crazy.  In fact he was very good at what he did.  And what he did was to make sense out of the fledgling Christian faith, in those first decades after Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, when people didn’t yet know whether or not that faith would amount to much.  And then he spread that faith as far as he could carry it.

It may be true that in ways St. Paul was a creature of his time, but in other ways he was also way ahead of his time.  Has his message of unity in Christ ever been surpassed?  It was St. Paul who wrote that “there is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28)  Yes, St. Paul was good at what he did. 

St. Paul, by El Greco

In El Greco’s portrait of St. Paul, it’s not the beard or the hairline of the apostle that stands out, rather, the artist has emphasized the apostle’s hands.  One hand is leaning on the hilt of a sword (which is the instrument of his death). The other hand holds a letter (an epistle): the form of writing most associated with the saint.  The effect is to convey that here is a man that has something to tell us, and that the message will cost him his life.  There is nothing about the painting that suggests that here is a crazy person.  Rather, it tells us that here is a holy person, and that his message is everything.

About one aspect of that message, St. Paul seems to have been wrong: that Jesus would return to establish his kingdom on earth soon.  In this miscalculation, the apostle was in good company, since Jesus himself suggested that time was coming soon for the kingdom of God to be established, and that “by endurance you will gain your souls.”  Well, we now know that it’s required a lot more endurance than anyone expected.

When you think the kingdom of God is dawning soon, it changes your perception of things.  And apparently, among those who converted in Thessalonica, some decided that if the kingdom of God was near at hand, then there was no point in going to work, or doing anything much at all.  But St. Paul would have none of it.  “Now we command you, beloved,” he wrote, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness!”  He goes on, “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you....”

“You yourselves know how you ought to imitate us.”  Here is a challenge that the church has not much interest in these days: to imitate St. Paul.

I would guess that the reason we are not too interested in trying to imitate St. Paul has less to do with the fact that he was a man of his time, and more to do with the fact that again and again he suggests we go big or we go home.  He is far too clear about the demands of following Jesus, and the conditions required as the kingdom dawns.  He is far too certain about the power of the Name of Jesus, and about the salvation that comes by that Name.  And we are uncomfortable with this kind of certainty, with this kind of faith.

Give us St. Thomas any day, over St. Paul.  Doubt we understand, even as a companion to faith.  But St. Paul’s strident certainty often seems like just a little too much for us.  He makes us nervous in an age of the life of the church when many are more likely to go home than to go big.

Here’s another thing that ought to make us nervous.  When St. Paul is writing to the Thessalonians, warning them not to be idle, but to imitate him, he is specific in what he means: “we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it.”  I like the nerve of this man.  But I see that in so many ways, the church has lost her nerve these days.

It’s tempting (oh, so tempting) to borrow a measure of nerve from St. Paul on Commitment Sunday, and to launch into a harangue about the danger of eating anyone’s bread without paying for it.  Has the church become a place where many come, expecting to eat bread without paying for it?  By this, I am not talking about the hungry who come to be fed on Saturday mornings, but the rest of us, who are called to do the feeding.

As I say, this homiletical line is tempting to me, considering the timing of the message today, and the sweet simplicity of it: “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us... and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day….”  Here is a custom-made stewardship sermon that might not comfort the afflicted, but that should certainly afflict the comfortable!  Are there any here who are eating bread without paying for it?!?!?!

It may not be one of the top three questions in the Bible, but it’s not a bad question.  But for me to follow this line of thinking this morning would be to choose a different emphasis than the one El Greco chose when he painted St. Paul: that is, the message, which is everything.  And the message is love.  “Love does no wrong to a neighbor... love is the fulfilling of the law,” he wrote in another letter. (Rom 13:10)

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (I Cor 13:1)

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” (Rom 12:9-10)

The epistle that St. Paul holds in his hand in El Greco’s painting is addressed to Titus, who was a friend of St. Paul’s and who, tradition says, became the bishop of Crete, the Greek island where El Greco was born.  For El Greco, the letter is a letter home, to friends.  It’s a love letter.  The kind of love you would give your life for.

It wouldn’t bother me if El Greco had used the mental patients at an asylum as the models for his portraits of the saints.  But I’d prefer it if someone discovered that he’d really used the members of his local parish church.

Maybe he would have selected as his model for St. Paul one who had been accused of eating bread without paying for it.  “Come,” the artist might have said, “sit for me, and try to look like St. Paul.  “And while you’re at it try to imitate him, remembering that he taught not only that you should not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but he also taught that faith, hope, and love abide; and the greatest of these is love.”  

And that message is everything!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
17 November 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

*the scholar/critic was Gregorio Marañón

Nothing But the Answer

Nothing But the Answer

Father Babin

Download

“Answer the question, and nothing but the question.” That’s the advice I received a few years ago when preparing for the General Ordination Exams. These exams, known as the GOEs and dreaded by many a seminarian, are 21 hours worth of required proficiency exams that must be taken by all candidates for ordination in the Episcopal Church. They cover six subject areas, and you are either deemed “proficient” or “not proficient” in each area, based on the assessment of the General Board of Examining Chaplains.

Because these exams are open resource exams, the particular challenge is not to go down rabbit holes. The objective is to answer the question thoughtfully and directly. “Answer the question, and nothing but the question.”

Well, that’s not bad advice if it means delivering a succinct, theologically sound response to the question prompt and not writing down everything you know just to prove how smart you are. The problem is that the exam questions are inevitably little more than fictional thought experiments.

For instance, trying to devise a funeral liturgy for a deceased stock character from an anonymous American town can be rather hard to do. There’s no experience with that person that can inform a pastoral liturgical response. In your head, you know the person doesn’t really exist, and pretending like he or she does feels phony. The test-taker can be left wondering just how such ethereal theologizing in a Word document relates to a real-life situation in a parish. You get the drift, I suppose.

As it turns out, I happen to think the General Ordination Exams are crucial to demanding some theological rigor from future priests. But theological speculation on paper in the form of an exam is most definitely not reality. And at the end of the day, the point of theology is to speak convincingly about God’s activity in particular human lives, not in the lives of invented characters. I’m reminded of a bit of advice I received from a seminary professor in a preaching class. You can wax eloquently about theological concepts until the cows come home, but at some point, the wheels have to touch the ground.*

Answering the question and nothing but the question doesn’t seem to be Jesus’ forte, though. His encounter with the Sadducees in St. Luke’s Gospel is the third in a series of encounters with opponents who are posing GOE-style questions. In the first question, earlier in chapter 20, Jesus has been teaching in the Jerusalem temple, and the chief priests and scribes confront him: “By what authority are you doing these things?” Translation: Who does this guy think he is? And Jesus fails to answer the question. Instead, he responds with his own perplexing query about the nature of John’s baptism. So far, he’s not doing so hot. And in the second question, Jesus must answer whether it’s lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. He responds with a rather oblique answer: “give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Okay, Jesus, could you elaborate just a bit more?

So far, Jesus is not answering the question, and nothing but the question. And by the third question, Jesus is in “not-proficient” territory. Here, the Sadducees offer a ludicrous hypothetical scenario in which the six brothers of a deceased man, in succession, take his widow as their wife according to the ancient custom of levirate marriage based in the Torah. Each brother died without an heir, and finally the widow dies. The issue is this: whose wife will the woman be in the resurrection?

Now, this is both a trick question (like all the others), as well as a cheap dig at belief in the resurrection. And Jesus, in his usual fashion, doesn’t really answer the question as much as he offers a theological corrective to the question itself. (This, by the way, is precisely what you don’t want to do when taking the GOEs.) Jesus shows himself not-proficient in the hypothetical world of exam questions because for Jesus, talking about God is all about the wheels touching the ground.

And the preposterous question levied by the Sadducees is not intended to touch the ground. It’s intended to make the resurrection of the dead seem foolish. But if we probe more deeply into a world that contains no hope of resurrection life, we see precisely why we need the wheels to touch the ground. And it’s because real human lives are at stake.

Tragically and shamefully, the widow in the Sadducees’ question has been dehumanized. The background of levirate marriage ostensibly provided protection in the form of a husband for a widow, who was a vulnerable member of ancient society. But in the Sadducees’ imagined scenario, the widow in question is objectified and viewed as nothing more than the property of her husbands.

To those who did not believe in the hope of the resurrection, you could only live on after death through your progeny. The widow was thus passed around from brother to brother, as you might hand down a piece of land, in the hopes that she would produce an heir. And she became the coveted means by which a man’s legacy could endure through successive generations.

If you rejected the resurrection of the dead, material goods, wealth, and the mammon of this world, bequeathed from generation to generation, would be the only posthumous testament of an earthly life. Perhaps in the future faces of the progeny of a patriarch, one might hope to see a visible, living example of his memory. And for some, I imagine that was better news than for others.

But Jesus throws a wrench in the cogs of this lifeless mechanism of human greed and materialism. By refusing to directly answer the Sadducees’ question, he refuses to legitimize the sinful structures of a culture that views women as property and life as nothing more than earthly existence. Jesus may not answer the question as it is posed, but he renders a testament to the power of resurrection life, where the wheels really do touch the ground, because human lives themselves are in question. In Jesus we find the ultimate source of freedom that breaks the vicious cycle of sin and death. In Jesus, God’s wheels touch the ground.

Resurrection life is the gift of a God who is God of the living and not of the dead. In that life, no person is the possession of another human being, but each is a beloved child of God. In that world, people don’t live on in surname and in wealth but continue to live in bodies that are changed according to the glory of God. Those who are worthy of a place in that age to come, where true life exists, are utterly free because they are not constrained by blood lineage to perpetuate their existence or by oppressive human constructions. They are like angels, and they are children of God, not slaves to the corrupt powers of this world.

But while the Sadducees’ question to Jesus was a theological thought experiment unworthy even of an answer, is their resurrection-denying worldview still only a thought experiment in our current world? If theological integrity demands that the wheels of God’s grace must touch the ground fully, shouldn’t we at least acknowledge that we live in an age full of people who really do not believe in a resurrection of the dead? And I’m not talking only about people of religions that hold no concept of the resurrection. I’m talking also about purported Christians who give verbal assent to resurrection life and yet who live as if earthly death were the end of the story.

Ironically, while we live in an age that is terrified of death, it is an age often deeply allied with death because it refuses to acknowledge what the hope of resurrection life really is. Look around and witness the objectifying of human beings on a daily basis: staggering numbers in the reports of abuse and victimization, human trafficking, and people locked in cages and treated as disposable property. It’s a reality. Whose children will all these people be in the resurrection? We can only pray for resurrection life where they will live freely as children of God, especially when they have been separated from their biological families or abused by their own kin.

And as youth in our Connect formation class have recently learned, in prisons across this nation, millions of people are viewed as incapable of second, third, or even first chances. Lock them up, and pretend they don’t exist is the order of the day. What kind of real resurrection belief holds that new life isn’t possible or that Jesus didn’t come to free people from their sins and offer them forgiveness?

But, thanks be to God, resurrection is also tied to God’s justice. If resurrection is nothing more than the sustained memory of a human life distorted by sin, then resurrection is nothing more than a perpetuation of evil. But we believe that the wheels of God’s justice have touched the ground in Christ. The resurrection age, far from being just an ethereal concept of a future time impinges on this age, too, so that human sin and death do not have the last word.

The widow of seven husbands was a stock character in a thought experiment by some Sadducees out to trick Jesus. She was tossed about from husband to husband because she was considered little more than an ancestral commodity. And tragically, she represents so many children of God who have been and continue to be demeaned by a world that is oriented more towards death than resurrection life.

There will be plenty of people who try to weaken your hope in resurrection life. They will scoff at your belief or denigrate it with ungracious questions like those the Sadducees lobbed at Jesus. Don’t let them succeed. Don’t let anyone take away your resurrection hope. The reason that belief in the resurrection is so much more than a hypothetical exam question is that the answer to the question is a matter of life and death. If the wheels of God’s mercy and compassion are on the ground, then fallen humanity is capable of redemption, and death is not the end of the story.

So, here’s the question, and it calls for an answer to the question and nothing but the question: in the resurrection, whose children will the marginalized, the poor, the lonely, the abandoned, the faceless, the persecuted be? Whose children will we be? And the answer, and nothing but the answer based on Christian hope, is that we will be the resurrected children of God.

Preached by Father Kyle Babin
10 November 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

*with gratitude to the Rev. Dr. Frank Wade for this image